Life Quakes

When the storm rips you to pieces, you get to decide how to put yourself back together again.― Bryant McGill

I loved being a panelist on Life 2.0 at Power to Pursue on May 10th at Music Hall. What a great panel -  and audience!

The phrase Lifequakes was coined by Bruce Fieler. I had Bruce as a guest on my show years ago to chat about his book “The Council of Dads”. While that isn’t the book that birthed the phrase ‘Lifequake” the experience described in it was a lifequake of major proportion. I encourage you to check it out. Spoiler alert- you will cry.

Life quakes as a topic for our panel grew out of a pre-event discussion with Whitney Ellison, our moderator. Whitney offered her condolences on the loss of my husband. I mentioned to her how stunned I was to discover that the average age a woman becomes a widow in the US is 58 years old. That’s how old I was when my husband died. That was a life quake. But recognizing that everyone has life quakes, and that my young widowhood was not unusual, helped me keep things in perspective. It’s all part of the human condition.

Life quakes can be:

Losing a spouse

Having a child

Ending a relationship

Getting married

Getting a medical diagnosis

Undertaking a move

We experienced a collective life quake with the  pandemic. Covid got us all thinking about our work, our homes, our relationships and more.  I don’t think there’s a person alive that wasn’t changed by the pandemic.

Statistically, each of us goes through dozens of life quakes in our lifetime. I like to think some of them might be called “life tremors.” One in 10 of these events are massive  enough to be called a life quake, however, and they tend to happen about every 5 years.  They’re roughly 50/50 involuntary vs self induced. About half happen to you. The other half happen by choice. Almost all life quakes can find you in a better place if you approach it right.

I sometimes feel like I’m the queen of life quakes.  I’ve launched multiple brands and businesses, created a radio show, a television show, published a cookbook and built my own consulting business.  Those are all positive quakes, but quakes non the less. I've also had a business fail - spectacularly and publicly. But that quake, and it was a doozy, led to some of my greatest successes.

What if I told you that you can expect life quakes throughout your life?  That you can work to get better at them, to handle each one more skillfully than the last? You can. You will.  Especially if you try the  strategies that I’ve used when a life quake hits:

Swim to shore- I used to say this to my daughter when she was younger. Think about a life quake as being plopped into the middle of a lake. Don’t thrash. Don’t panic. Swim to shore. Slow and steady.  Get to a place where you can catch your breath, dry off, collect yourself. This is key. Give yourself time to take stock of what is happening.

Those things you don’t want to feel? Feel them. Give yourself the time and space to feel into every corner of what you’re going through. Why are you scared? Don't avoid it- go all the way in. List everything that worries you about your circumstances and allow yourself to acknowledge every bit of it.  I quite literally make myself imagine every worst case scenario that could happen.  Funny thing about really looking at what scares you……you realize how unlikely most of your scary scenarios are- and you realize you can handle those that might actually happen. Don’t skip this step- be thorough. It’s the foundation for the positive change that you need.

Free yourself from conditioning. As you reshape and define your future, pay attention to how guided you are by past conditioning. What is really true for you? What do you want? Not what your Instagram page wants. Not what your friends want. Not what your parents or children want. What do you want? Ask yourself, "Am I thinking expansively, or am I limiting myself?" and "How can I reshape my perspectives to see limitless possibilities instead of restrictions?"  Think outside the box- think like there is no box- and rebuild with your ideal life in mind.

Let go of your past and step into your future. Anytime a major change happens in life, you must let go of your old identity-  and that can feel very chaotic. As your vision becomes clear and you start to see progress it becomes easier to settle into the new version of yourself. And guess what? Another life quake is on its way to you. But this time, you’ll recognize its simply part of a full life. Your track record for getting through things so far is 100%. And now you’ve got a strategy to handle it, come what may.

All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you - Walt Disney